Part IV:
April, 1634
—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
—E’en then would be some stooping, and I choose
Never to stoop.
Chapter 29
Stoner began to realize, as he stared at the forbidding stack of documents in front of him, the truth of two essential propositions.
First, that there was a very real value in the rejection of materialism, which was that it saved you a lot of work.
The second was that a cheerful willingness to be helpful was going to get taken cheerful advantage of sooner or later.
Magda and Sharon and Benjamin Luzzatto had come in grinning from ear to ear. Well, Sharon was grinning from ear to ear, Magda was smiling demurely and Benjamin was wearing his professional po-face with a hint of cheer. It didn’t matter. Sharon was grinning enough for seven or eight people, let alone three.
“We have been shopping,” Magda said brightly.
“Exactly,” Sharon added, “when the going gets tough, the tough go—”
“—shopping,” Stoner capped the quotation, just as he went weak at the knees because Benjamin had produced what looked like about thirty kilos of paper and actual by-God parchment, done up in no-messing-around by-God red tape. He dropped the package on the table with an expensive-sounding thud.
Benjamin then cracked a smile himself. “We have been very busy, but we need some signatures and seals to make it proper and legal.”
Stoner looked from the paperwork to the short, bright-eyed Jewish lawyer and commercial agent. And back again. And back to Benjamin. At least Benjamin wasn’t grinning his head off, although Stoner suspected that was because he took money seriously and not because he wanted to help Stoner mourn his final passage into the world of bread-headdity. Nevertheless, the sight of a lawyer, smiling—even a short, runty, friendly one like Benjamin—would normally have sent Stoner diving through the window into the canal. Had Benjamin been grinning as widely and sharkily as Sharon was doing, he doubted whether he’d have bothered to open the window first.
“So, what is all this?” he asked, gesturing weakly.
“Money,” said Magda, uttering the code-word that told him to more or less leave it to her. “And commodities for all of the industries at home, and some other deals to make it all work.”
“All this just to buy stuff?” he asked, fishing for a full explanation of some kind. He supposed short words and a diagram were too much to hope for . . .
“Ah,” said Benjamin. “I have here—” He reached inside his kaftan. Benjamin sometimes found it convenient to get by in Venice by dressing as a Turk rather than wearing the distinguishing marks of his Jewish faith, and the Venetian authorities seemed willing to tolerate the minor subterfuge as long as he didn’t overdo it. Stoner didn’t understand the social complexities involved in the little dance, but he always found that garment a bit amusing. The garb of a hippie back up-time had originally been the garb of a rich Muslim.
What wasn’t so amusing was what Benjamin was pulling out. Stoner felt his heart sink as Benjamin produced one of Grantville’s precious stock of laptops. Powerpoint slides and spreadsheets had been treated as the direct Word of God by every seventeenth-century businessman who had arrived in Grantville. The Sephardim, though, had been particularly enthusiastic; the Viennese scion of the Abrabanel clan, Don Moses, was widely known as a slideshow bore of truly terrifying proportions. Stoner held up his hands. “Benjamin, can I just have the edited highlights?”
Benjamin looked perplexed. “Signor Stone, all of it is important. And the Signora Stone, she has made some most excellent trades in your behalf. There is, first the share in the Mocenigo fleet to—”
Sharon put a hand on Benjamin’s shoulder and the birdy little lawyer ran down to a halt. Stoner realized, with the first spark of joy he had felt since the three of them had walked in, that she was genuinely, freely grinning, not just keeping her end up for company.
“Stoner,” she said, “it breaks down nice and simple. We sold shares in all the potential mines that our exploratory crews have been finding. We sold metals futures in the mines that are ready to start producing this year. King Gustav’s copper concessionaires have been coming through us for the Mediterranean market because we agreed to work—what was it, Benjamin?”